Port Antonio Restaurants

The Jerk Center of the Universe

Boston Beach is the most famous jerk center in Jamaica, with pit after smoky barbecue pit lining the beach. This is where you come to find the ultimate in this food form. Sometimes residents of Kingston drive all the way up here just to stock up on these tasty bits of meat.

Jerking, of course, is the spicy slow barbecuing of meats such as pork, chicken, or sausage. The technique was said to have originated with the Windward Maroons, who hunted wild pigs in the Rio Grande Valley and cooked their meat over green pimento wood.

Mille Fleurs
Restaurant
Caribbean, Continental, Cuisine Specialties, Jamaican, Vegetarian

Hotel Mockingbird Hill
Drapers
Port Antonio
Tel:876-993-7267
Fax:876-993-7133

Jamaica Touristboard
Restaurant Mille Fleurs at Hotel Mocking Bird Hill offers culinary delights in a romantic setting. Acclaimed by Gourmet magazine, the restaurant offers terrace dining with spectacular views overlooking the harbour of Port Antonio and the sweep of tropically forested hills with the Caribbean Sea in the background. Sample some of the best food in Jamaica after taking in the spectacular sunsets. Imaginative menus including vegetarian selections use only fresh, local produce and offer creative Caribbean Cuisine. You will discover a menu of creative dishes and specialities with inimitable exotic flavours that will surprise and seduce you. Items such as jams, pasta and all the breads are home made.

The bar offers excellent views of the Blue Mountains and the Caribbean and provides a spectacular setting for evening drinks. It is tastefully furnished with white wicker and floral accents.

Savour this treasure of calm and serenity while inhaling the tropical scents of the garden with night jasmine. After a gourmet dinner, guests can enjoy a nightcap on the terrace and enjoy the starry nights while listening to chirping tree frogs and songs of cicadas or soft music for entertainment.

Frommers
This restaurant is terraced into a verdant hillside about 180m (600 ft.) above sea level with sweeping views over the Jamaican coastline and the faraway harbor of Port Antonio. Sheltered from the frequent rains, but open on the side for maximum access to cooling breezes, it features candlelit dinners, well-prepared food, and lots of New Age charm. Lunches include sandwiches, salads, grilled-fish platters, and soups. At night, you might feast on fresh lobster or tender lamb and beef dishes, even savory rabbit or smoked marlin. The restaurant has been praised by Gourmet magazine for its dishes. You may want to try the coconut-and-garlic soup, and the fish with spicy mango-shrimp sauce is a specialty. Breads and most jams are made on the premises. Two dishes are vegetarian.

San San Tropez
Fine Dining
Continental, Italian, Jamaican, Seafood, Vegetarian

San San Bay
Drapers
Port Antonio
Tel:876-993-7213
Fax:876-993-7399

Jamaica Touristboard
Just opposite Frenchman's Cove Beach, one villa-hotel and fine dining is welcoming you for the best dinner you ever dream.
When italians & jamaicans join together, welcome to San San Tropez ! Almost everything homemade, pizzas, bread, pastas and cakes & icecreams...don't miss it !
Serving Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner

Frommers
In 1994 Milan-born Fabio Favalli bought a well-located villa that had originally been conceived as the staff quarters for an upscale resort (Frenchman's Cove) that was devastated and bankrupted in the late 1980s by a hurricane. Since then, the villa has earned a well-deserved reputation as a provenance for superb Italian food. This is served at lunch and dinner, conducted in either an indoor dining room (its decor emulates that of an ancient Roman villa) or at candlelit tables beside the swimming pool. Menu items include well-prepared homemade pastas, especially linguine "Blue Lagoon" (with shellfish), lasagna, or spaghetti served either with carbonara or bolognese sauce. Any of these could be followed by portions of very fresh fish, grilled and seasoned with Italian and Jamaican herbs, and a medley of refreshing desserts. Other good choices include the staples of Italian cuisine, chicken or veal parmigiana, and osso buco.

On-site are six suites, each with ceiling fans, cable TV, air-conditioning, and a separate living room and bedroom. Depending on the season, they cost from $94 to $136, double occupancy, with breakfast included.

Anna Bananas
Cuisine International

Address 7 Folly Rd
Phone 876/715-6533

Frommers
Architecturally, the building that contains this open-air seafront restaurant features little more than a wooden deck with a soaring roof. There aren't even any walls to prevent storms or rain from penetrating the inside, but in light of how relaxed the place is, most clients don't seem to care. Painted a bright shade of yellow and named after the childhood nickname of the owners' daughter (who hated bananas), it was established in the late 1990s by a consortium of Texan and Jamaican entrepreneurs. Menu items, as described on a chalkboard, include cheese sandwiches, tender savory oxtail, fried fish or chicken, BLT sandwiches with avocado, and platters of zesty jerk chicken and pork (on weekends). Drinks are wide-ranging and frothy.

Rough Guides
A seaside restaurant overlooking the bay, it's one of the best inexpensive places to eat in the area, with excellent, smiling service. Popular with tourists and locals alike, the food is reliable Jamaican; breakfast, lunch and dinner are served daily.

Blue Lagoon Restaurant
Cuisine Jamaican, Jerk

Location The Blue Lagoon, Around Town
Phone 876/993-7791

Frommers
There is no more romantic place in town to dine than on one of the wooden decks at this restaurant, projecting out over the lagoon made famous by the movie of the same name; trees were spared, so trees even sprout up through the decks around you. The unusual menu is devoted mostly to jerk dishes. You can order jerk pork (the most tender and most succulent of tenderloin), but even crayfish, lamb chops, chicken, and lobster are given the jerk seasoning treatment. The spicy conch, flavored with a zesty honey-garlic sauce, is another reason to dine here, and the stuffed crab back is Port Antonio's finest: The chef takes a crab shell, stuffs it with crabmeat, and grills it with oil and butter. Drinks are designed to amuse. Ask for a "Sex in the Lagoon," the bartender's specialty and the only XXX-rated drink in Port Antonio. (You'll have to order it for a surprise; we're not telling what's in it.) If you really want a romantic dinner, ask for your meal served on a floating raft in the middle of the lagoon.

Coronation Bakery
Cuisine Bakery

Address 18 West St
Phone 876/993-2110

Frommers
The best bread in town emerges, steaming, from the ovens at this bakery, a landmark that the late William Chung established in June of 1953. Owned today by his son Cyril, it's set in the heart of Port Antonio, in a 70-year-old all-wood house whose carved columns and graceful lattices support an old-fashioned zinc-roofed veranda on the second floor. Inside, for a picnic or to take back to your villa, you can buy fresh loaves of hard-crusted sourdough, perhaps with the intention of smearing it with the guava jelly that's available at any local supermarket. They also make fresh cocoa buns, a savory version of cornbread, a peppery version of Jamaican patties (dough envelopes filled with minced and heavily peppered meat), and sweet buns flavored with Jamaican allspice and nutmeg. Especially interesting are the bulla cakes, a fast-baked, unleavened bread that used to be a cheap staple for agrarian workers laboring away in the sugarcane fields. Many years ago, they were fast-baked at high temperatures (as a means of saving fuel) with very little sugar, whatever flour the homeowner had on-hand, and a small amount of bacon grease or lard. Even today they're known for their prolonged shelf life in hot, humid climes. They sell here for about 12¢ each; locals maintain they're best consumed with a thick slice of cheese, perhaps as part of a picnic at the beach

Dickie's Sweet Banana Stop
On the A4 just west of Port Antonio.

Rough Guides
On a knoll as you round the far bend of Port Antonio's west harbour, this simple wooden house scaled down the cliffside is easily missed, but is one of the best choices around. The moderately priced four-course dinners are fabulous (order the morning before you want to eat); choices include ackee on toast, garlic lobster and steamed fish. You can also drop by for breakfast, lunch or afternoon tea.

Lion's Hut Café
10 Queen St.

Rough Guides
Relaxed Rasta-oriented place with outdoor seating and delicious ital-style meals: ackee and callaloo breakfasts, steamed veg and brown rice, jerk chicken, and roast, escovitch or shredded fish. Great natural juices.

Panorama
Cuisine International, Jamaican

Location In the Fern Hill Club Hotel, Mile Gully Rd, Around Town
Phone 876/993-7374

Frommers
One of the finest dining spots in Port Antonio offers a sweeping view of the rugged coastline, with great sunsets. Specialties include jerk chicken, jerk pork, grilled lobster, and Creole fish. Depending on who's in the kitchen, the food here can be quite satisfactory, though once in a while, especially off season, the cuisine might be a bit of a letdown. The club also offers entertainment, with a calypso band during the week.

Port Antonio Marina
West Street.

Rough Guides
With funky décor and a pretty harbourside setting, this is perhaps the most upmarket place in town. The moderately priced lunch menu offers pizzas, sandwiches, burgers, chicken wings and the like; there's good lobster and seafood for dinner.

The Hub
Cuisine Jamaican

Address 2 West Palm Ave
Phone 876/715-6943

Frommers
Set within a cement-sided, relatively nondescript building just east of the town center, this is the local restaurant most often cited by expatriates as their favorite local eatery. Lloyd Bentley, the hardworking owner, maintains a sense of humor about his restaurant's lack of a view. (It overlooks a parking lot and a side yard of the now-defunct local railroad.) But in a town loaded with seafront panoramas, patrons flock here anyway. Menu items are fresh-made and flavorful, featuring a tried-and-true blend of such dishes as pork chops, three different preparations of chicken (including a version in brown-stew sauce), stewed peas with rice, oxtail, and brown-stewed fish.

Rough Guides
Just west of the main drag near the old train station, this is a popular place for afforable Jamaican food: rundown, liver or callaloo for breakfast, stew beef, stew peas, cow foot, chicken or baked chicken for lunch and dinner.

Trident Hotel Restaurant
Cuisine International, Jamaican

Location In Trident Villas & Hotel, Rte. A4, Around Town
Phone 876/993-2602

The elegant Trident Hotel Restaurant serves meals that evoke the Jamaica of the 1950s. The cuisine is always prepared with first-class ingredients, though the setting and the white-glove service are generally more memorable than the food. The high-pitched wooden roof set on white stone walls holds several ceiling fans that gently stir the air. The antique tables are set with old china, English silver, and Port Royal pewter. The formally dressed waiters will help you choose your wine and whisper the name of each course as they serve it. The five-course dinner menu changes daily but might include a Jamaican salad, mahimahi with mayonnaise-and-mustard sauce, steak with broccoli and sautéed potatoes, and for dessert, peach melba and Blue Mountain coffee with Tia Maria, a Jamaican liqueur.